A Land of Wargs And Yunkishmen

The fantasy series that inspired HBO's 'Game of Thrones' shows an ever growing ambition with its latest entry.

By

Tom Shippey

July 11, 2011

George R.R. Martin's millions of fans have been waiting six years for "A Dance With Dragons." It is the fifth volume in what was once planned as a six-part series collectively titled "A Song of Ice and Fire." But the plan has changed. After completing volume three, "A Storm of Swords" (2000), Mr. Martin had trouble containing his fourth volume. He kept on writing and writing, and little wonder: "A Song of Ice and Fire"—with its prodigious book sales and a popular HBO series based on it ("Game of Thrones")—is a fantasy work of runaway success and ever growing ambition.

Eventually Mr. Martin's publishers said that they would have to bring out the fourth volume in two parts, but the author balked at the idea of cutting his story off half-way through and then starting up again. He decided instead to divide the contents of volume four by geography rather than chronology. The official volume four, "A Feast for Crows" (2005), dealt with events in the south of the imaginary continent of Westeros. Now "A Dance With Dragons" tells the story of parallel events in the continent's north and east.

One can see why Mr. Martin made his bold decision. "A Feast for Crows" ends with a 75-page appendix that is entirely a cast list: the great houses contending for the Iron Throne, their supporters and enemies, the "smallfolk" caught up in the contention, the wanderers who criss-cross the stage. All told, there are more than 1,000 names. It makes a certain kind of sense to tell the story of one sector of the action and then turn to another, separately, rather than crowd a single canvas with still more figures.

Fans of "A Song of Ice and Fire" will surely think the wait was worth it. The series generally concerns the efforts of the great Houses of Westeros to achieve supremacy and unite the divided continent. In the first three volumes, contenders for the Iron Throne were much reduced in the War of the Five Kings. "A Feast for Crows" dealt with the first attempts at recovery and centered on affairs at King's Landing, in the continent's south. One prominent story line followed the widowed Queen Cersei Lannister as she tried to establish her son on the throne, hindered by doubts about his legitimacy and balked by her incestuous twin, Jaime. Another dealt with the Stark family, once Kings in the North, the menfolk now mostly betrayed or dead and the women disguised and on the run. "A Dance With Dragons" changes the scene and the cast.

In the north, Jon Snow, an illegitimate Stark, continues to guard the Wall of ice, which runs across the narrow neck of the continent and keeps the inhabitants of the Haunted Forest at bay. He is joined by the men of the Night's Watch, a kind of black-cloaked foreign legion consisting of the continent's losers. When a man takes the black (or so they say), his crimes are wiped away. But Snow's lord or ally (depending on how you look at it)—a man named Stannis Baratheon—has his eye on the south. Rather than negotiate with wildings, white walkers and other troublesome folk, he is keen to revive the fight for the Iron Throne, insecurely held by the child Tommen Baratheon and his scheming mother, Cersei.

ENLARGE

A Dance With Dragons

By George R.R. Martin Bantam, 1,016 pages, $35

In the east, across the Narrow Sea, Daenerys Targaryen, the last and most formidable member of another great House, has fought her way to power in the city of Meereen but is feeling increasingly isolated. Her policy of freeing slaves is not popular. Nor is her closing of the fighting pits, the main entertainment of the upper classes. Her eunuch guards, the Unsullied, are murdered in the street by guerrillas, while smooth-talking Yunkishmen try to get her to see economic sense. Her ace in the hole is her command of the three dragons she raised from eggs. But dragons are not easy to control.

A major connecting character between north and south is Tyrion Lannister, Queen Cersei's brother, born a dwarf and so a family liability. He is on the run, having murdered his father. His dwarf-status acts as a kind of protection, because—though he is probably the most intelligent character in the whole cast list—no one takes him seriously. People underrate him, which surely suggests for him a future decisive role.

The action in "A Dance With Dragons," following on "A Feast for Crows," sets the stage for a joining of Westeros's north and south, all contenders in both aiming, as ever, to bring the continent into some kind of unity after years of vicious civil war. But leaving aside its involuted story lines, one might wonder where lies the secret of Mr. Martin's success. He is often dubbed "the American Tolkien," but the core of Tolkien's success is easily stated: Middle-earth itself. Westeros is a much less fantastic place. It has dragons, true, and "wargs" (or skinchangers) and giants, but these figures are mostly peripheral, so far.

The great attraction of the story must lie in its panorama of a medieval kingdom: knights in armor, mercenary "sellswords," tavern wenches, struggling and striving inhabitants in all forms, from low to high. Almost everyone is out for himself, without any greater cause to serve. The most useful quality is cruelty. Flay your enemies or put them in cylindrical oubliettes, where the prisoner is made to stand at all times, unable to sit, crouch or even scratch an ankle. Loyalty? Gratitude? Rare qualities, especially among the aristocracy. The interconnections within a fully realized world give the saga its engaging sense of wheels-within-wheels.

Mr. Martin had a long run as a sci-fi author before he turned to fantasy, and some of his early fans may wish that he had stayed in that genre. But fantasy is now where the big action is. Millions yearn, vicariously, to live it.

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.